If you clicked on this blog post you probably have failed goals in the past. You’re probably really good at dreaming up goals but acting on them is the hard part. You’ve probably gotten upset a few months into the year because you are nowhere near accomplishing your goals.
If that sounds familiar, then you’ve come to the right place.
why your goals aren’t getting accomplished
As someone with ADHD goals have always been super hard for me. I’d make these huge goals for myself, that I really wanted to accomplish, but at some point in the year I’d decide I’m a failure because I haven’t reached that goal and I should just give up. Or I’d make goals but then I wouldn’t know how to even achieve them because sometimes knowing where to start is the hard part.
It wasn’t until I learned about OKRs that I realized why my goals never worked for me. And that was because they weren’t actionable. Sometimes they were just ideas and not really anything I could physically do, or they were out of my control.
Measure What Matters* – a great book on OKRs
*affiliate link used
create better goals
To start creating better goals you want to really hone down what your goals are; make them more specific. For this part, we’re only talking about the overall goal, or Objective.
- increase sales → increase sales to website by 40%
- get more traffic → get 30% more traffic to website
- increase Pinterest traffic → get 250k monthly views on Pinterest
break down the goals into steps
But that’s not where it ends. Each goal is really made up of tiny little steps, and THOSE steps are your actions. Those are how you complete the goal. And you can make these as small as you want, depending on how you need to see tasks.
Okay so lets take your Objective (or your overarching goal) and break those down into Key Results (or actionable steps).
goal 1: make full time income on Cricut
(side note: for this goal I actually have a dollar amount written down, but “full time” is subjective to everyone and I’d like to keep that part of the goal to myself!)
- upload X designs daily
- upload 1-4 projects a month
- take videos of projects and share those on Tiktok, Facebook, etc
goal 2: get 40% more traffic to my website
For a goal like this, go to your previous years’ stats and get the number. Then go to a percentage increase calculator and plug in the numbers to get the actual goal number.
- post X pins a week linking to my website
- upload X new products each week
- send 1-2 emails a month
This year I’m focusing on Pinterest as my main traffic source to my website and blog. It’s already the leader, so I want to lean into that full force. I never really had much luck with traffic overall on Instagram or Tiktok, not enough to make it worth investing time in each week (right now at least).
goal 3: get monetized on YouTube
- post 1 video a week
- post 2 vlogs a month
- share videos to Instagram and Pinterest
- get 1,000 subscribers
- have 4,000 watch hours
final thoughts
So in short, take your goal and turn it into something that can actually be accomplished by making it more specific. What are the steps to get there? Can you break it down by monthly or weekly steps? Are those steps actionable?
I hope this blog post has helped you create better goals for the new year! If you’re looking for more small business tips, look no further.